Tart. A. III. Sc. 2.
[5] Sursùm & deorsùm disciplina.——All the Women (as the Writer of this Commentary has been told, when in Catholic Countries) who make self-flagellation part of their religious exercises, whether they live in or out of Convents, use the lower discipline, as defined above: their pious and merciful Confessors having suggested to them, that the upper discipline may prove dangerous, and be the cause of hurting their breasts, especially when they mean to proceed in that holy exercise with unusual fervour and severity. A few Orders of Friars, among whom are the Capuchins, also use the lower kind of discipline; but for what reason the Commentator has not been as yet informed.
Perhaps it will be asked here, how Priests and Confessors have been able to introduce the use of such a painful practice as flagellation, among the persons who choose to be directed by them in religious matters, and how they can enforce obedience to the prescriptions they give them in that respect. But here it must be remembered, that Penance has been made a Sacrament among Catholics, and that Satisfaction, as may be seen in the Books that treat of that subject, is an essential part of it, and must always precede the Absolution on the part of the Confessor. Now, as Confessors have it in their power to refuse this Absolution, so long as the Penances or Satisfactions of any kind, which they have enjoyed to their Penitents, have not been accomplished, this confers on them a very great authority; and though, to a number of those who apply to them, who care but little for such Absolution, or in case of refusal are ready to apply to other more easy Confessors, they scarcely prescribe any other kind of Satisfaction than saying a certain number of prayers, or such like mortification; yet, to those persons who think it a very serious affair when a Confessor in whom they trust, continues to refuse them his absolution, they may enjoin almost what kind of penance they please. And indeed since Confessors have been able to prevail upon Kings to leave their kingdoms and engage in perilous wars and croisades to the Holy Land, and to induce young and tender Queens to perform on foot pilgrimages to very distant places, it is not difficult to understand how they have been able gradually to prevail upon numbers of their Devotees of both Sexes, to follow practices which they had been so foolish as to adopt for themselves, and to practise, at their own choice, either the lower, or the upper, discipline.
[6] Dial. Ὑπὲρ τῶν Εἰκόνων—Καὶ τοὶ παλαιὸς οὕτος ὁ λόγος, ἀνευθύνους εἶναι Ποιητὰς καὶ Γραφέας. The Greek word ἀνευθύνους, used here, literally signifies that Poets and Painters are not obliged to give any account of their actions. Horace has also expressed a thought of the same kind with regard to them, in his Ars Poetica, “Painters and Poets have always equally enjoyed the power of daring every thing.”
Pictoribus atque Poëtis
Quidlibet audendi semper fuit æqua potestas.
A. P. v. 9, 10.
The complaints of our Author with respect to the loose which Painters have been used to give to their own fancy, when they have treated religious subjects, are well grounded; and persons who have travelled in Catholic Countries cannot but have taken notice of the freedom that prevails in their Church-pictures: hence a number of stories are related among them of Nuns, or other Women, who have fallen in love with naked figures of Angels and Saints, and of Men who have been led into extravagances by the passion they had conceived for certain statues, or pictures. As to errors concerning facts merely, and faults against the Costume, which our Author seems more particularly to allude to, in this Chapter, they are certainly very frequent in the works of Painters: even the first among them, such as Paul Veronese and others, are reproached with capital ones. On this occasion the Writer of this Commentary thinks he may relate what he himself has seen in a Country Church in Germany, in which a Painter, who had intended to represent the Sacrifice of Isaac, had so far availed himself of the potestas quidlibet audendi, mentioned above, that he had represented Abraham with a blunderbuss in his hand, ready to shoot his son, and an Angel, suddenly come down from Heaven, pouring water on the pan.